Greetings One and All:
The LINCS Region 1 Professional Development Center recently hosted a virtual study circle for teachers and counselors in Region 1 on the topic of student self-determination. The focus was on helping students develop self-determination skills as a way of supporting student persistence. Participants attended three online meetings and used a private LINCS Community group to complete assignments and share ideas and resources with their colleagues. Juliana Taymans and I were the subject matter experts and Diana Satin was the study circle’s facilitator. I’d like to share a little about the study circle resources because I think others in the LINCS Community of Practice might find them interesting and useful.
Diana started the study circle with a video on self-determination theory by Professor Edward Deci. This resource is available at http://vimeo.com/30754832. The study circle then focused on using the self-determination model created by Field and Hoffman (2004) to better understand our students’ strengths and needs. This model allowed us to see exactly where students might need further instruction in self-determination. You can find a brief but thorough description of the model in Chapter 2 of Learning to Achieve: A Professional’s Guide to Educating Adults with Learning Disabilities (Taymans, 2010) available in the LINCS Resource Collection:
http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/L2AProfessionalGuide_final.pdf
In addition, participants designed an activity that explicitly taught or infused self-determination strategies into their classroom, individual tutoring, or one-to-one counseling situations. One of my “a-ha” moments was the importance of thinking about goal-setting as a process that really comes alive through self-monitoring. That’s where students can independently reflect and make adjustments – skills that can be developed through direct instruction but don’t seem to get much time in busy teaching/learning schedules. To help students do more effective goal-setting and monitoring, we looked at a publication with several easy to use tools, The Adult Learners Goals Toolkit. You can find this publication at http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdeadult/download/pdf/GoalsToolkitR.pdf
I’m also hoping that the study circle participants will take a few minutes to add Comments about their key learnings and “a-ha” moments. We’d also invite you to comment on what you see.
Cynthia Zafft, Region 1
LINCS Regional Professional Development Center